


Batgirl's Terrible No Good Very Bad Night

by kayeslin



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 05:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11479542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayeslin/pseuds/kayeslin
Summary: Stephanie has a terrible patrol, which is bad enough, but also relatively common. The fact that it was all captured and released on social media? Yeah that makes the following weeks uniquely awful.





	Batgirl's Terrible No Good Very Bad Night

  
  
Crime-fighting wasn’t a picnic; it wasn’t really supposed to be. It was about protecting people, putting away bad guys. That was the job, that was the reward. No perks wanted or accepted.  
  
Still though, it would be nice if there weren’t so many crap nights. And better if there weren’t also shit nights. And awful nights. And terrible no good very bad nights.  
  
Also if terrible no good very bad nights could not be followed directly by similarly unpleasant mornings - yeah that’d be great.  
  
-  
  
The night starts with a small Arkham breakout. A dozen small time inmates and seven of the bigger threats had escaped, so Oracle suggested the Family split up and focus on the more dangerous ones while she’d take on the other twelve herself. Of the priorities, Stephanie chose Clayface. She caught his trail, tried to catch him at his hideout, and then gave chase when he spooked at a backfiring car and ran before she could land on him.  
  
He’d only made it out of the roof of the building when she confronted him. She launched an electrified wire around his arm, but before she could send a charge he whipped it up and launched her in the air. In the split second she had on her flight up in the air, she looked at her options for a safe landing, cursing herself for her slowness all the while.  
  
There weren’t any taller buildings to grapple off of, but there was a motel at the end of the block with a pool out front. She suspected the place was pay-by-the-hour and that the water would be suspect at best, but well beggars can’t be choosers. So she extended her cape to guide her decent. It wasn’t rigid enough to properly hang-glide but it was enough to steer, so she landed in the pool with a big splash.  
  
-  
  
Unfortunately for Steph, there was a private eye spying on a cheating husband outside the motel. She abandoned her query to capture quite a few pictures of Batgirl in the pool, and was hungry enough to sell them almost immediately to various tabloids that liked collecting Bat-sightings. The next morning the headlines were about Batgirl taking a break in the night for either a relaxing swim or a quickie sexcapade in the night, depending on if their photo had the no-tell motel’s sign in the frame.  
  
-  
  
Stephanie gave herself a quick shake when she pulled herself out of the pool and looked to see if she could still see Clayface. She couldn’t, so she ran back to the building he’d been hiding in and climbing back onto the roof. Clayface, luckily for her but unluckily for him, was the kind of dude who couldn’t help but leave a literal trail behind him. There a little drop of, well, Clayface, on the north corner of the roof.  
  
Her grapple gun would be the best way to follow across the street, so she pulled it and out and started swinging.  
  
She made it to the other next building, but didn’t see another helpful piece of her prey. He probably stayed in going in a straight line though, and Steph figured if she went fast enough she could move quicker than him. So speed was the name of the game.  
  
She leaped the rest of the buildings on the block, grappled to the next block, and then did it again. She could see a drop or two on a roof or a street light, which reassured her she was going the right way. After four blocks Steph could actually see a moving pile of mud flee into a construction site. Bingo!  
  
Steph shot a grapple at a balcony railing, planning on swinging through the construction tarp near the top of the building and get the drop on Clayface like she’d originally planned. Only she had landed in a pool earlier, and her grapple gun had been jerkier than usual during her earlier jumps. She’d taken casual note of it, but hadn’t thought it meant much more than a need for a good cleaning when the night was done. It actually meant the winch was sticky from pool chemicals and it jammed on Steph.  
  
The hook wouldn’t unstick from the rail. The wire wouldn’t retract back into the gun. Stephanie was stuck swinging in the air under a residential building.  
  
-  
  
Stephanie actually saw the flash come from the apartment she was swinging next to and even a few from the building across the way, but didn’t expect exactly how far the pictures would go.  
  
“HANG IN THERE” Batgirl posters became the next big thing for local college kids. Every classmate whose dorm she’d visit would have it on their wall or as their desktop background. She’d see it printed out and taped to the back of binders all over the library, the school cafe, all over campus.  
  
Someone even hang one up in the Clocktower, but none of the Birds would fess up to it. Steph suspected Black Canary, but Cass’ poker face was legendary so she wouldn’t really put it past her either.  
  
-  
  
Steph was debating making her own momentum to swing into the skeleton building, abandoning her grapple gun, and taking Clayface down anyway. But then the asshole saw her and left. Dammit. She should collect her gun before following; it didn’t do well to leave bat-gear lying around town if she could help it.  
  
So Steph climbed up the thin wire, careful never to let it wrap around any of her limbs lest it cut through her body armor. She was more annoyed than tired by the time she made it to the balcony, but that still meant she would have liked a breather. Instead she saw the glint of gun barrel taking aim at her through the window and she was forced to quickly flip back under the balcony to avoid a bullet to the face.  
  
Steph took some deep breaths as more shots rang out overhead, clenching her calves as hard as she could to keep from slipping off the balcony. Bent backwards and holding on with her knees to the edge of the balcony was really not the safest place to avoid a gun fight.  
  
The bullets stopped coming, so maybe her attackers had run out of ammo. She swung back up just for the firing to continue as soon as her hands grabbed hold of the railing. So back upside down she went.  
  
The front entrance it was then.  
  
Steph flipped onto the balcony bellow and of course no one locks the exterior door when you live on the 6th floor so she snuck into the apartment, trying to ignore the very naked man sexting in his bed, and headed to the floor above to shut down… whatever criminal activity she’d accidentally stumbled upon in that apartment.  
  
-  
  
This stop got a nice double meme-ing.  
  
First was a shot of her dangling from the balcony. “Bats sleep upside down,” seemed to be the favorite caption.  
  
The shot of her breaking into the apartment bellow her query were infinitely more popular. Nothing had ever proved to Stephanie that she had the worst luck in the world than finding out she’d been caught in one of the pictures the dude took of his junk. Either he was proud enough of Batgirl being in the same frame as his dick to post the pictures all over the web himself, or he’d sent an unsolicited Bat/dick pic to someone vengeful enough to do it for him.  
  
Either way, the pictures were incorrectly linked to Steph’s trip to a sketchy pool and then the whole city spent quite a while talking about Batgirl’s booty call. The asshole even had the nerve to go on talkshows and give interviews about “dating” Batgirl.  
  
-  
  
Amateur drug dealers. Young ones, by the looks of them. They seemed to just be branching out from selling weed to their classmates into cocaine to…probably still their classmates. They had figured with harder drugs they’d need more security and this being America and all they’d managed to get a whole boatload of guns. Babies with their first guns got trigger happy, Steph knew, and everyone freaked out when they saw a Bat on their balcony.  
  
It took nothing to storm through their front door, knock them all out, tie them up, and call the cops to clean up after her. Stephanie stormed up to the building’s roof in a huff. Slowed down from taking down her escapee twice and she couldn’t use a grapple gun — just her luck.  
  
Clayface had fled east before teenagers had tried to gun Batgirl down. She wasn’t exactly far enough up shit creak to pull Oracle’s focus away just to send her a motorcycle, so Stephanie weighed her options between staying on the roofs even without the aid of a grapple gun and moving to the streets. Roofs were sort of the Bat thing; they gave a better view and let then move as the bird flew rather than as lazy city planners thought would curb traffic jams. But without a grapple gun jumping the bigger gaps would take a few more precious moments and be more dangerous.  
  
Eh, Steph was all about danger, right? Rooftops it was. She could always just use power lines to help cross streets without her gun.  
  
-  
  
“Guess the Bat-Joker feud stems from Trapeze-Clown feuds,” the many many many people who saw Steph tightrope walk across power lines that night said. There was also “wait till she pulls a unicycle out of her belt,” “now juggle your batarangs,” and “Bats really are recruited from the circus.”  
  
Dick, the dick, like the last one so much he printed out the caption and hung it in the Batcave, thus robbing Steph of one more training place to go without seeing her face on a freaking meme.  
  
-  
  
Stephanie finally found Clayface again near a park, starting to slink into a storm drain. She was sore and tired and didn’t want to risk losing him again so she jumped the little tail of his mud still peaking out above ground with a taser, shocked him until he solidified enough to pull him back up onto the grass, and started to work around tying him up.  
  
Clayface immediately shifted his whole form into that of a little girl and started screaming.  
  
“HELP!” Clayface called out. “Don’t let her hurt me!”  
  
“He’s not a little girl!” Batgirl yelled, pulling the brat into a headlock. “He’s Clayface!”  
  
“Leave her alone,” some late-night passerby said bravely. Someone else threw something that hit Steph’s head.  
  
“Again, this is an Arkham escapee, not a 3rd grader!”  
  
-  
  
Twitter had a goddamn field day with Batgirl beating up an innocent little blonde white girl. By then the story had been mostly cleared up as to who it was, but still. The jokes were there.  
  
-  
  
Little girls were easy forms to detain, so Clayface morphed again into what he hoped was a better defense.  
  
Stephanie actually did pause for a second before punching the face of the President of the United States of America, but only because she knew there were quite a few anti-vigilante lobbyists with talk-shows that would get a kick out of this if the footage got out.  
  
-  
  
Of course the footage got out.  
  
Batgirl became the face of a number of political movements, both as an strawman enemy and a mascot. And with the conspiracy theories came the sudden appearance of a few poorly disguised Secret Service members investigating Gotham and its crime-fighters. It was all a bit rich, and Steph hated that she saw it all coming.  
  
-  
  
“Batgirl! Stop this at once!” Batman said.  
  
“Clayface,” Stephanie said, “that is very much the wrong face to take to avoid me beating you up.  
  
-  
  
These were the only pictures taken that night that Steph liked. One was the background on her phone. It was a great angle, and the light from the street lamp made it look very Renaissance. The photographer had a real future, is all she’s saying.  
  
-  
  
Stephanie finally managed to get some inhibitors on Clayface to dampen his powers enough to turn him into the authorities.  
  
The cops met her at the park, took him away in a reinforced truck, and Stephanie was left mostly alone.  
  
“Hey O,” she said into her comms, “Clayface is back in custody.”  
  
“Good,” Barbara muttered. “Come on back to the Clocktower and I’ll give you leads on some of the others. With any luck we can have all the escapees back in Arkham before sunrise.”  
  
Steph turned her mic off before groaning. She just wanted to sleep, but there was still work to do. She debated for half a second about hailing a cab, but opted for walking through the park before taking the rooftops. Ironically enough, it was because she wanted to avoid attention. Little did she know at the time, right?  
  
She walked past some squirrels chattering angrily, a bird struggling to fly, and a well groomed dog pulling a pair of pants in its mouth before realizing another delay was in her immediate future. Because where did that dog get a pair of pants? She took a single step off the park path and found her answer in a pile of clothes. She saw a dress shirt and a sports-coat that matched the pants she saw. The pile even had some sensible heels, bra, and underwear.  
  
Steph steeled herself for finding some poor traumatized woman. Her eyes were peeled but her steps were soft, ready for either a fight or to take on the role of a therapist. Then she found another pile of clothes, exercise clothes this time. Then a prep school uniform. Huh.  
  
She heard some muttering past another wall of bushes and delicately stepped up to spy through the branches.  
  
The clearing ahead of her was either the site of a decent recreation of the Blair Witch Project, or some local kid was trying their hand at some magic. Goddamn magic. Steph groaned again, and dropped her head head back to stare at the stars. This fucking night.  
  
“Alright, kid,” Steph walked into the clearing, “put the book down and step away from the pentagram.” The pre-teen did neither but Stephanie wasn’t exactly in a position to argue because she was now a cat.  
  
-  
  
No one found her uniform lying abandoned in the woods, thank god. Between the dick pic and the no-tell motel Stephanie didn’t need to add any fuel to the “Batgirl likes kinky hook-ups in costume” rumors.  
  
They did find _her_ though. Some very high college students were documenting their experience on psychedelic mushrooms when they ran into “the cutest cat in the world.”  
  
Steph the cat was, in fact, super duper cute. She had long golden fur a grey belly and socks. Her ears even had little dark tails like a bobcat. They followed her around, meowing and falling over themselves trying to pet her.  
  
Since she was a cat, she was all too happy to let them.  
  
The full video didn’t see the the light of day, since the shooters weren’t very eager to publicize exactly how high they were.  
  
What they did post was the very end of the video.  
  
-  
  
“Pretty witty little kitty baby!” the girl wearing a loose sundress cooed. Steph butt her head against her hand, and the girl obediently scratched behind her ears.  
  
“Get her chiny chin chin,” said the girl behind the camera. Sundress-girl moved her hand under Steph’s kitty chin. Steph started purring. Sundress girl had long nails, it was nice.  
  
“She’s like a cloud,” whispered a boy delicately stroking down Steph’s back. Her tail flicked him in the nose and everyone started laughing uncontrollably.  
  
“Fluffy baby kitty cloud,” giggled a girl who was actually too high to pet Steph and was instead lying down in the grass staring at the stars.  
  
Steph, very much consumed by cat brain, left the people who wanted to pet her to walk over to the one who wasn’t and butt her head up against her arms for scritch-scratches, meowing all the while.  
  
“Sorry I’m going to need this,” said Red Robin, jumping down from a tree, picking up cat-Steph, and running away.  
  
-  
  
Steph watched the loop of her cat-self being cat-napped with a mixture of the same embarrassment that consumed her with the rest of the footage of her night and jealousy that she really did look super soft as a cat, but she’d never be able to pet herself.  
  
“How’d you even find me?”  
  
“When you didn’t turn up to the Clocktower, Oracle got worried,” Tim said trying not smile as the video started back again to cat-Steph begging for pets. “I was finished with Killer Croc, so she sent me to where your tracker was still pinging. Found the rookie witch, figured out what spells she was practicing. I was basically looking for any animals out of place.”  
  
“I can’t believe you recognized me as a cat,” Steph scoffed.  
  
“He probably didn’t,” Cass said quietly. “You just looked soft enough to pet anyway. I'd pet you.”

Stephanie didn't answer right away. The three of them watched the video loop back again in silence.

"I do look soft," she finally said quietly, with no small amount of wistfulness.

"Hang in there, Batgirl," Dick said. The dick. "I'm sure we'll find you a suitable cat friend. Maybe your new boyfriend can help, but he seemed like more of a snake guy."


End file.
